6Media ServerDVBLink 4.5 & Server 2012 media server

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In the last 6 weeks 2 major updates have totally changed the media serv­er land­scape. DVBLink serv­er 4.5 and Microsoft Win­dows Serv­er 2012 in com­bin­a­tion look to offer an ideal win­dows-plat­form for a home media server.

Firstly lets address DVBLink. This suite of products have enabled net­work shar­ing of live and recor­ded TV for some time. The biggest piece miss­ing from the puzzle has been cent­ral­ised record­ing. With the release of DVBLink 4.5 at the start of July this has finally been addressed by the inclu­sion of a nat­ive recor­ded built-in to dvblink serv­er which cent­ral­ises all record­ing. Until now it was neces­sary to run DVBLink on a win­dows 7 PC, so that Media Cen­ter could be used as a record­er on the serv­er, but the intro­duc­tion of the nat­ive record­er has opened the door to run­ning a full serv­er OS which has advant­ages, includ­ing being free to stu­dents via dream­s­park.  Serv­er 2012, whist includ­ing the[int­link id=“2543” type=“post”]awful new UI[/intlink] from Win­dows 8 does have some excel­lent new fea­tures, in par­tic­u­lar [int­link id=“2283” type=“post”]storage spaces[/intlink].  As a serv­er the UI does­n’t tend to mat­ter as much as it is rarely used, and there are[int­link id=“2862” type=“post”]ways to restore a more usable UI[/intlink] any­way. All in all, these 2 products look to provide an ideal com­bin­a­tion for a media serv­er. Once Serv­er 2012 is avail­able from dream­s­park we’ll pub­lish a full setup guide.

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6 Comments

MMontell

I have had this card run­ning for six months and after that it stopped work­ing. First the satel­lite chan­nels and then the ter­restri­al. I returned it to Black­Gold and they replaced a chip and returned the card. When I installed it I still exper­i­enced the same prob­lem. I have tried to con­tact Black­Gold but they have not replied.

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JSJon Scaife

That’s very dis­ap­point­ing to hear. Have you made any more pro­gress? If you bought the card in the UK you should be able to get a refund as the product clearly has­n’t las­ted for a “reas­on­able” peri­od of time.

Whenev­er I have struggled to get a response from a com­pany I have always found writ­ing (first by e‑mail, and if neces­sary by snail mail) to the chief exec­ut­ive has always pro­duced res­ults. From what I can see the Black­Gold CEO is Tony Nedd. The address for the main Black­Gold office is John Eccles House, Robert Robin­son Aven­ue, Oxford Sci­ence Park, Oxford, OX4 4GP, and their registered address is 32 Mead­ow View, Mar­low, Buck­ing­ham­shire, SL7 3PA. You could also try phoning them on +44 1865 338008.

Let us know how you get on 🙂

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Ttony

I’ve been try­ing to get this work­ing, but I’m hav­ing issues get­ting the BDA drivers installed (I think)
have you got this work­ing already?

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JSJon Scaife

I pre­sume you man­aged to get the BDA drivers installed using bda­forserv­er and Win­dows 8 files? If not give it a try, it worked for me.

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